A technical problem that kept an unknown number of products out of eBay's search engine index has been fixed, and the e-commerce giant plans to issue credits to affected merchants.

The problem started on Wednesday morning of last week but eBay didn't acknowledge it until late Friday evening.

The company declared the problem solved at around 3 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time on Monday, and advised merchants to not relist affected items, but to instead start a new listing from scratch.

"This week, we will be issuing credits for all items impacted. Please be assured it is not necessary to contact us; we will be issuing these credits automatically," eBay announced Monday in its official Systems Announcements Web page.

It's not clear how many products and merchants were affected. EBay didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

EBay has been testing what it calls a "new search experience" in recent months and about two weeks ago the company announced it would directing more traffic to this new engine.